Virgin Undefiled
Mary’s Perpetual
Virginity and Her Miraculous DeliveryT
As light passes through glass without harming it, so too did Jesus pass
through the womb of Mary without the opening of Mary’s womb and without any harm
to the physical virginal seal of the Virgin, who was pure and the perfect
tabernacle of the unborn Christ.
Holy Mother Church teaches that Mary
was not only perpetually virgin but that she also delivered Christ in a
miraculous manner. I would like to, in this article, present these views of
Holy Mother Church as well as those of the Angelic Doctor in proving that not
only was Mary perpetually a virgin, but also that her delivery of Christ was
both painless and did not alter her physical virginity in any way. It was
commonly held among the early Christian Fathers that the Blessed Virgin Mother
did not experience any pain in giving birth to Christ. Oftentimes, they would
turn to the prophet Isaiah as Scriptural evidence of this, which states,
“before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was
delivered of a man child” (Is 66:7). This article will consider the painless
and miraculous birth of Christ in the light of the dogma of the perpetual
virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mother. The dogma itself professes Mary’s state
of virginity as perpetual, i.e. that she was and is always a virgin, before,
during and after her delivery of Christ, her son. Pope St. Martin I was the
first who defined this ternary character of the dogma and he did so during the
Lateran Synod in 649 A.D., where he pronounced as an article of faith that,
“the blessed ever-virginal and immaculate Mary conceived, without seed, by the
Holy Spirit, and without loss of integrity brought Him forth, and after His
birth preserved her virginity inviolate.”2
The Definition of Virginity
When the early Christian fathers used
the term virgin, they were not merely referring to a physical or
experiential reality, i.e., that Mary hadn’t physically been with a man or that
she had no experience with sexual intercourse. Instead, when they referred to
Mary with the title of virgin, it was taken to mean a sign of her essential
character. Hence, the fathers presupposed the understanding that Mary was
virginal in all regards of her person, body, soul, and spirit (1 Cor 7:34). On
account of the grace of God, then, Mary’s virginal character grew, matured, and
increased until she became the woman of God who was assumed into heaven. In
this regard, her essential virginity came to maturity in a purity unlike any
other creature. Hence, her physical virginity which was assumed to have
continued until the day she died, is a physical sign of her spiritual
character.3
Mary’s Virginity before Christ’s
Birth
Sacred Scripture attests to the
virginity of Mary across both Old and New Testament. In reading the Gospel of
Luke, readers see the Annunciation narrative wherein the archangel Gabriel
appears to Mary and announces unto her that she is to become the mother of the
Second Person of the Trinity. Luke narrates how Gabriel was sent “to a virgin
betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the
virgin’s name was Mary” (Lk 1:26–27). The exchange that ensued between Mary and
Gabriel bore coherent confirmation of Mary’s virginity as, when Gabriel
informed her, “you will conceive in your womb and bear a Son” (Lk 1:31), her
immediate response was, “how will this be since I know not man?” (Lk 1:34).
Scripture scholars often point out this distinction that to “know” someone in
scripture, within proper context, often means to partake in sexual intercourse
with the person.
Looking ahead to an historical
document, the Protoevangelium of James, written sometime around 120
A.D., albeit not canonical, also bears testimony to the perpetual virginity of
Mary. The document narrates the prophecy that preceded the birth of Mary, also
depicting how Mary was devoted to Temple services by St. Anne before she was
born. The assumption that follows this is, if Mary had been so consecrated, such
a life would include the undertaking of the vow of perpetual virginity.
Retrospectively, then, it is clear
that the Old Testament presents the prophecies that prepared the way for this
reality. The Prophet Isaiah states, “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you
a sign. Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be
called Emmanuel” (Is 7:14). Scholars vary in their interpretations of the word
“virgin” as, within this verse, the Hebrew word used could also be taken to
mean “maiden.” Nonetheless, the Old Testament usage of said word bears the
implication that the maiden would, herself be a virgin.4 Dispute over the verse
is put to final rest in the conception of Christ by Mary for, indeed, a virgin
did, in fact, conceive and bear the Son of God, the one who is “Emmanuel” or
“God with us,” Saviour and Redeemer of the world.
St. Thomas Aquinas sums up this
reality perfectly in stating how, “on account of the very end of Incarnation of
Christ, which was that men might be born again as sons of God, ‘not of the will
of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God’ (Jn 1:13), i.e. of the power
of God, of which fact the very conception of Christ was to appear as an
exemplar.”5 From there, Aquinas
quotes St. Augustine who, in writing about the Blessed Virgin, describes how it
was proper that Christ be conceived in a virgin so that the future members of
the Church would, in their turn, be born, by the birth of water and the Spirit,
of a virgin Church.
Mary’s Virginity during the Birth of
Christ
The second of the three facets of the
dogma of Mary’s perpetual virginity refers to Mary’s physical virginity being
preserved during her delivery of Christ.
The papal definition of Mary’s
continued virginity during the birth of Christ refers to the event that at the
appointed time of birth, Jesus left the womb of Mary without the loss of Mary’s
physical virginity. The Church understands Mary’s virginity during the birth of
Christ as an absence of any physical injury or violation to Mary’s virginal
seal (in Latin, virginitas in partu) through a special divine
action of the all-powerful God. This divine act would safeguard Mary’s physical
virginity which is both symbol and part of her perfect, overall virginity; a
virginity both internal and external, of soul and of body.6
This fact was decisively and broadly
propagated by the early Christian fathers and the Doctors of the Church. The
fathers of the Church overwhelmingly taught the “miraculous birth” of Jesus
that resulted in no injury to the Blessed Virgin Mary’s physical integrity. In
quoting a sermon from the Council of Ephesus, Thomas Aquinas writes, “After
giving birth, nature knows not a virgin: but grace enhances her fruitfulness,
and affects her motherhood, while in no way does it injure her virginity.”7 Hence, Aquinas is
arguing with conciliar support that Mary’s physical virginity remained intact
upon her delivery of Christ. The Old Testament prophecy of Isaiah clearly
states, “Behold a virgin shall conceive,” but, to that effect, the prophecy
further adds, “and shall bear a son” (Is 7:14). Accordingly, Aquinas posits
certain logical conclusions from this. Two of these are as follows: Firstly,
regarding Christ as the Word (logos). Because the word is conceived in
the mind without corruption, it has to necessarily proceed from the mind
without causing corruption. This principle is also true for the Word incarnate
being conceived and brought forth in Mary. Hence the same sermon of the Council
of Ephesus states, “Whosoever brings forth mere flesh, ceases to be a virgin.
But since she gave birth to the Word made flesh, God safeguarded her virginity
so as to manifest His Word, by which Word He thus manifested Himself.”8 Secondly, Aquinas
quotes Augustine who demonstrates how Christ, who came to heal corruption,
would not, at the advent of his coming, violate the physical and virginal
integrity of Mary.
To wit, Pope St. Leo the Great also
defends the preserved virginity of Mary in the process of Christ’s supernatural
birth. He states, “Mary brought Him forth, with her virginity untouched, as
with her virginity untouched she conceived Him.”9 The understanding that
birth pangs were, essentially, the result of a curse that followed the fall of
man need be considered, for it followed the act of the sin of Eve. Scripture
recounts how the Lord God said to Eve, “in pain you shall bring forth children
I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring
forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule
over you” (Gen 3:16). Being the New Eve who, herself, had chosen a life of
absolute obedience to the will of God and who was so confirmed in grace by her
Immaculate Conception, Mary stood apart from the rest of womankind regarding
this curse. She brought forth Christ, the Son of the Living God whilst
preserving her virginal integrity as inviolate, all without experiencing any
sense of pain.10 In the Dogmatic
Constitution on the Church, the Second Vatican Council reaffirmed the Church’s
teaching on Mary’s inviolate virginity upon Christ’s miraculous birth. It
states, “This union of the mother with the Son in the work of salvation is made
manifest from the time of Christ’s virginal conception…then also at the birth
of our Lord, who did not diminish his mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified
it.”11
The Painless and Miraculous Birth of
Christ
Because of this, Mary necessarily
felt no pain during the birth of Christ. Aquinas describes the pains of
childbirth as being caused by the infant opening the passage from the womb,
i.e. passing through the birth canal. However, “Christ came forth from the
closed womb of His Mother, and, consequently, without opening the passage,”
and, ergo, had to have caused her no pain in doing so.12 Elsewhere, Aquinas
construes that the pangs of childbirth are the result of the mingling of the
sexes, i.e. sexual intercourse.13 However, in quoting
Augustine, Aquinas demonstrates how this cannot pertain to the Blessed Virgin
Mother, “because she conceived Christ without the defilement of sin, and
without the stain of sexual mingling, therefore did she bring Him forth without
pain, without violation of her virginal integrity, without detriment to the
purity of her maidenhood.”14 Aquinas assumes St.
Jerome’s position as assumed valid, i.e. that “no midwife was there, no
officious women interfered. She was both mother and midwife.”15 He further argues by
way of deduction from this that because Scripture supports this in illustrating
how the Blessed Virgin Mother, by herself, after having given birth to Christ,
“wrapped [him] up in swaddling clothes and laid Him in a manger” (Lk 2:7), she
must have necessarily experienced a painless and miraculous delivery of Christ.
Mary’s Virginity after the Birth of
Christ
The final aspect of the dogma
involves Mary’s preserved virginity after her delivery of Christ and unto the
end of her days on earth. The Prophet Ezekiel writes, “This gate shall be shut,
it shall not be opened, and no man shall pass through it; because the Lord the
God of Israel hath entered in by it” (Ezekiel 44:2). St. Augustine, in
explicating this verse, postulates the following:
What means this closed gate in the House of the Lord, except that Mary
is to be ever inviolate? What does it mean that “no man shall pass through it,”
save that Joseph shall not know her? And what is this — “The Lord alone enters
in and goeth out by it” — except that the Holy Ghost shall impregnate her,
and that the Lord of angels shall be born of her? And what means this — “it
shall be shut for evermore” — but that Mary is a virgin before His Birth,
a virgin in His Birth, and a virgin after His Birth?16
Popes across history defend this
teaching as well. Pope Paul IV who rebuked anyone who would deny that the
Blessed Virgin Mary “did not retain her virginity intact before the birth, in
the birth, and perpetually after the birth.”17 The Second Vatican
Council also lent its voice to the profession of this dogma by declaring the
Blessed Mother as the “glorious ever Virgin Mary.”18
Looking back at the New Testament,
and, in particular, the Annunciation event, it is inducible, from Mary’s
response to the Angel Gabriel, that she was attesting to a vow of perpetual
virginity. By contemplating her response, “how will this be since I know not
man?” (Lk 1:34), Church Fathers have come to understand Mary’s reply as an
allusion to the vow of perpetual virginity that she had already undertaken,
offering herself as a complete and irrevocable gift to God. Her statement, “I
know not man,” may be taken as an advertence to a pre-existing, permanent vow
that connotes an invariable disposition of her virginity. Scholars go so far as
to conclude, from this, that God would not only honour such a vow but continue
it, thus preserving her virginity even during and, in his grace, after Christ’s
birth unto the end of her earthly life.19 It is amazing that the
Protestant reformer, Martin Luther corroborated this dogma in his own
statement, “Mary realized she was the mother of the Son of God, and she did not
desire to become the mother of the son of man, but to remain in this divine
gift,” a statement that his contemporaries and even other reformers such as
Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin and John Wesley, also affirmed.20
St. Thomas Aquinas treats this aspect
of the dogma by appealing to other theological truths. Firstly, because Christ
was God’s only-begotten Son, it would follow that he likewise deserved to be an
“only-begotten” Son of Mary, through whom he received his human nature. Secondly,
Aquinas draws from the reality that because the Incarnation, through whom God
himself would come to be “born of a woman” (Gal 4:4), took place miraculously
through the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, Mary’s womb was necessarily the
shrine of the Spirit. Carnal conception in that same shrine would be to
desecrate its sacredness and the uniqueness of its seed of precedence. By
extension, he also illustrates how preposterous it would be to assume that Mary
herself would desire to forfeit God’s miraculous preservation of her immaculate
virginity through carnal relations as well. With a tone that comes across as
almost indignant, Aquinas also adds that it would be a grave disrespect to St.
Joseph to assume that he would want to violate a vessel so pure with carnal
relations.21
A further, and final, consideration
of Scriptural proof of Mary’s perpetual virginity and its logical correlation
that she had no other biological children save Christ, is found in the Gospel
of John. At the foot of the Cross at Calvary, Christ entrusts Mary into the
care of his beloved disciple (cf. Jn 19:26–27). It would have been of grievous
offense to Christ’s alleged other siblings if he had not entrusted Mary into
their care, per Jewish custom. The fact that Christ intentionally entrusted
Mary to the Apostle John is a sound indicator of Mary’s not having other
biological children. (Tangentially, this was also the point where Christ
declared her Mother of the Human Race, but that is for another article.)
It was always God’s intention that
Salvation History come to a climactic point in the person of Christ. Likewise,
it was in his divine Will that Mary was to be, for all mankind across the ages,
the perfect model of Christian discipleship. Her life, offered as an absolute
and irrevocable gift of self to God renders her as the exemplary type of the
Church which, herself, is both virgin and mother as well. In mirroring the
virginity of her Son, God’s preservation of Mary’s virginity presents her as an
excellent instance of consecration of self to all disciples of Christ in his
beloved spouse, the Church — Mary is an ideal expression “that holy virginity
is the highest objective vocational gift of self to God.”22
1. Mark I.
Miravalle, Introduction to Mary: The Heart of Marian Doctrine and
Devotion(Goleta, CA: Queenship, 2006), 58; excerpted online as “The
Miraculous and Painless Birth of Jesus Christ,” Mother of All Peoples, Marian
Library, motherofallpeoples.com/blog/the-miraculous-and-painless-birth-of-jesus-christ.
Hereafter “Miraculous and Painless Birth.” 
2. Miravalle,
“Miraculous and Painless Birth.”
3. Dwight Longenecker
and David Gustafson, Mary: A Catholic-Evangelical Debate(Leominster:
Gracewing Publishing, 2003), 63–64.
4. Miravalle,
“Miraculous and Painless Birth.”
5. ST III, Q. 28, A.
1, Res.
6. Miravalle,
“Miraculous and Painless Birth.”
7. ST III, Q. 28, A.
2, Sed.
8. ST III, Q. 28, A.
2, Sed.
9. Pope St. Leo, Enchiridion
Patristicum, 2182.
10. Eds. Robert I.
Bradley, SJ, and Eugene Kevane, Roman Catechism, (Boston: St. Paul
Editions, 1985), 49–50.
11. Pope Paul VI,
“Dogmatic constitution on the Church,” Lumen Gentium (1964),
no. 57.
12. ST III, Q. 35, A.
6, Res.
13. ST III, Q. 35, A.
6, Ad 1.
14. ST III, Q. 35, A.
6, Ad 1.
15. ST III, Q. 35, A.
6, Ad 3.
16. Judith
Costello, To Mary, our morning star: Mariology in ten lessons (State
College, PA: Goldhead Group, 2013), 254.
17. DS 1880;
Dupuis, The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic
Church, no. 707.
18. Pope Paul VI,
“Dogmatic constitution on the Church,” Lumen Gentium (1964),
no. 52.
19. Cf. Collins, SJ,
“Our Lady’s Vow of Virginity,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly (1943),
5.
20. Martin Luther,
Wiemar edition of Martin Luther’s Works, trans. William J. Cole,
11, p. 320; John Calvin, cf. Bernard Leeming, “Protestants and Our Lady,” Marian
Library Studies, January 1967, 9; John Wesley, Letter to a Roman
Catholic; Ulrich Zwingli, Zwingli Opera, Corpus Reformatorum,
Vol. 1, 424.
21. ST III, Q. 28, a.
3, Res.
22. Miravalle,
“Miraculous and Painless Birth.”
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